“No one likes an outsider. They know it all, haven’t paid their dues, and often think little of the rules everyone else has been required to play by….” With these words in the preface, the editors set the stage for an interesting group of essays about contributions to the field of biology by those who were not trained in the field of biology in which they had an impact. The titles of the sections demonstrate the variety of fields from which these contributors arose. Areas outside biology include physical sciences, mathematics, human sciences, and computer science. One section is devoted to those who were trained in one specialty of biology but made contributions in other fields of biology.

In the introduction, the editors describe biology as being the “middle ground between the physical and exact sciences, on one hand, and the social sciences and humanities on the other.” …